As he says, while it’s meant for lyrics, it’s really just a text field, so you can put anything in it – Assimil dialogues, troublesome vocabulary, or transcripts of whatever you’re listening to. I’ve had an iPod of some sort for years now, and I never thought of doing this, even after seeing some podcasts come packaged this way, like Slow German. All this time, I’ve been printing out copies of the transcripts for Deutsche Welle’s Top Thema podcasts, when I could have just been copying and pasting the text into the Lyrics field.

For a long while, I thought it was that my ears just weren’t accustomed to normal speaking speeds; I thought I just needed more exposure to the spoken language. The more I listen though, the more I think Annik just talks really, really fast. In Alltagsdeutsch, there are often large segments in each podcast where they’ve interviewed people on the street, and I can usually understand these people just fine. While I very rarely understand the meaning of everything they say, I am at least able to understand what they’re saying, so I can look up the unknown words. With Schlaflos in München there will often be segments of each podcast that I just can’t understand at all – the words are flying by so fast I can’t pick any out, they’re just a bunch of syllables squashed together.

This, of course, is not an “attack” or any such thing on Annik Rubens. It’s her podcast, and she should be allowed, if you will, to talk however she wants. After all, she makes a specific Slow German podcast for us learners. I do think, though, that learners might find it useful to know that, in my opinion, her speaking speed is not representative of the normal speed at which Germans speak. If you listen to a few episodes of Schlaflos in München and suddenly feel as if your listening skills have taken a lunge backwards, try listening to something else. It may very well be the material, not you.

Can anyone else comment on this? Have you noticed it as well? Could a native German have a listen at Annik’s site, and let me know if I’m crazy or not?

You can access all of the episodes of Slow German here, at podcast.de. You can access the latest episode, along with its associated transcript, at slowgerman.com.

Schlaflos in M�nchen, however, is (I think) a better representation of how most Germans speak. Annik (the maker of the podcast) talks about all kinds of things – her cat, her life, stuff in the news. It is essentially a personal German blog, but in podcast format. However, don’t let that fool you – in making over 400 episodes of Schlaflos in M�nchen, Annik has learned how to keep the production quality high. The sound quality is great, as are all of the “extras” she edits in – funny sounds, music, clips from listeners.

Listening to her podcast is a good way to train your ear to understand “rapid fire” German, complete with emotions. Unlike the Deutsche Welle podcast folks, Annik often laughs, speaks in fake voices to imitate someone or something, speeds her speech up when she gets excited over something, etc. And let’s face it – we all do this in our native tongues. While it would make things easier for foreign language learners if everyone spoke in the same dull, unemotional voice, it’d get pretty boring.

Her podcast is also a great source of everyday vocabulary. As I wrote in this post, not all vocabulary is alike. While it’s good to know the vocabulary that news articles use, knowing that vocabulary won’t necessarily make it easier to understand natives speaking about everyday things. Some vocabulary is formal; some is informal. You need to strike a balance. Schlaflos in M�nchen will give you your dose of informal vocabulary.

So, if you’re learning German and haven’t listened to Schlaflos yet, please give it a try. I think you’ll enjoy it. If you do end up enjoying it, you’ll have plenty to keep your hands (or iPods) full. The complete archive of her show is available through iTunes. (You can also get all of her old episodes via this feed, if you’re not an iTunes user.)

News of the week in simplified Russian is posted to the web bi-weekly and delivers a survey of the previous two weeks’ news in simplified standard Russian Listeners of Voice of America’s “Special English” broadcasts will recognize the slightly slower rate of speech and textual redundancy which characterize these webcasts.

Why News of the week in simplified Russian ? Back in Soviet times, the news was easy to understand. The propaganda-laden messages were predictable and the diction clear and slow. Post-communist newscasts feature telegraphic speech and slurry diction. Our webcasts serve as a stepping stone between the teacher talk of the classroom and the “real” Russian of the media.

Authentic news. The news itself is taken from a number of Russian sites, including Lenta.Ru, Vesti.Ru, Ytro.ru and other authentic sites.

Perhaps one of the best features of the site is that there are full transcripts of every episode they’ve ever done. It’s recommended that you listen to the audio first without the text, to get the most out of it – but once you get stuck, you can always fall back on the transcripts. Not only are transcripts available, but there are also exercises for every single episode.

The archives for the website go back to 2003, so there’s a lot of content here. The interface of the website is a bit clunky, but it’s worth fighting with.

In regards to language level, the webcasts are recommended for “students with listening skills at ACTFL Intermediate Mid to Intermediate High. In most cases, that corresponds to college Russian at the end of second-year.”

Last (but certainly not least!), the webcasts are a project of the National Capital Language Resource Center (NCLRC).

• Lesson 15 (Letter “A”)
• Lesson 16 (Letters “Б,В,Г”)
• Lesson 17 (Letters “Д,Е,Ё,Ж”)
• Lesson 18 (Letters “З,И”)
• Lesson 19 (Letters “Й,К,Л,М,Н”)
• Lesson 20 (Letters “О,П,Р,С,Т”)
• Lesson 21 (Letters “У,Ф,Х,Ц,Ч”)
• Lesson 22 (Letters “”Ш,Щ,ь,ъ,Ы,Э,Ю,Я”)

And of course, don’t just watch the videos and leave her site. She’s got a lot of good material there, both in her regular podcasts as well as in her Downloads section.

MIT’s Foreign Languages and Literatures (FL&L) section is exploring ways to use podcasting and mobile media players such as iPods in foreign language teaching, thus enabling their students more frequent and non-traditional ways to hear and speak foreign languages.

…

The common goal in the faculty podcasting projects is immersing students, as much as possible, in a foreign language during the course of a semester. Given the ubiquity of mobile devices (e.g., cell phones, MP3 players), students can now experience many types of media in nontraditional surroundings 24 hours a day. They can fit in a few minutes of language learning while riding the bus, walking the dog, or exercising in the gym. Podcasting, as a distribution medium, has changed the learning landscape, providing many more opportunities for immersion.

Portable devices really have turned the whole idea of a “language lab” upside down. With iPods or other MP3 players, you can basically take your language lab anywhere you go. This is a huge jump even from the home computer becoming a language lab over the past years. With the internet and access to so much foreign language media, both text, audio, and visual, a computer with a broadband connection can easily serve as a language lab. But unless you have a laptop, you can’t very well carry your computer around with you. Portable devices solve that problem wonderfully.

Another segment of the article that I thought was pretty cool was this:

At Groeger’s request, LLARC is investigating tools that would allow for an oral threaded discussion, in the style of a regular online forum.

That would be pretty amazing. Students and teachers could post to the forum whenever they had time; after a while, after a thread had been heavily active, you would essentially have one long dialogue to work with. A teacher could then slice in their responses to each student with corrections. This would be great for the students, as well as anyone else who wanted to listen to the exchange.